J. Mayone Stycos

Immigrant environmental behaviors in New York City

Objective. This article compares environmental behaviors of immigrants and the native-born to answer questions about potential impacts of immigration on the U.S. environment. Methods. We consider immigrant/native-born differences in the likelihood of engaging in environmentally friendly behavior. With data from a survey of New York City residents, we test two hypotheses regarding environmental behavior: (1) controlling for environmental orientation, environmental knowledge, acculturation, community attachment, and economic status will reduce immigrant/native-born differences, and (2) controlling for race will increase immigrant/native-born differences. Results. Our analysis provided no support for the second hypothesis, but there were varied results for the first hypothesis depending on the type of environmental behavior considered. Conclusions. Our findings for New York City show that fears of immigrants being less likely to engage in environmentally friendly behaviors are unfounded. Of greater significance to environmental organizations is the lower level of immigrant involvement in environmentally oriented political behaviors, suggesting that continued immigration will present challenges both in making the environmental movement more ethnically diverse and in maintaining its vitality.

Teenage sexual attitudes in China.

Not much is known about the sexual attitudes of Chinese teenagers. In this article we endeavor to address this void by examining the sexual attitudes of Chinese teenagers with survey data collected in Sichuan Province in 1988. Our analysis has two goals: first, to describe aggregate attitudes toward premarital sexual practices; and second, to identify the principal factors that influence these attitudes. To accomplish the second goal we estimate several regression equations with predictor variables known to influence teen sexual attitudes. Our analysis reveals major differences and similarities between China and the United States and indicates that Chinas teenagers are somewhat strongly opposed to teen sexual contact, but seem to be more understanding of others who so engage, despite strike laws and public morality forbidding it.

The decline of fertility in Costa Rica: literacy, modernization and family planning.

Abstract At mid-century when Costa Ricas birth rate was among the worlds highest, marked fertility differences were recorded among the countrys 68 cantons. Literacy levels and sex ratios largely account for the early differences, which were due to variations both in age at marriage and in marital fertility. Dramatic fertility declines were initiated in the 1960s in cantons in which literacy was higher and overall modernization more advanced. In a second phase, however, fertility in the less modernized cantons declined rapidly, especially where rates of family planning acceptance were high. Costa Ricas unusually high literacy early in the century and more recent gains in post-primary education are suggested as factors which precipitated the initial decline in fertility, with the national family planning programme serving to diffuse fertility control to less developed regions of the country.

POPULATION AND THE ENVIRONMENT: POLLS, POLICIES, AND PUBLIC OPINION

Although recent academic and popular attention has argued for a wedding between population and environmental problems and policies, the scientific knowledge base for these topics has grown separately and at different rates. Environmental research has grown faster than population research, while the joint treatment of these topics remains in its infancy. International polls that have included many questions concerning environmental attitudes have included far fewer on population. The few surveys on population attitudes have ignored the environment. The World Fertility Survey and the Demographic and Health Survey are fertility, rather than population, surveys. They have been useful in precipitating national policies on family planning but are poor models for needed attitudinal and cognitive research on population and the environment. Some contemporary polls, such as the United Nations-sponsored poll conducted by the Louis Harris Agency, have serious methodological defects. Others, such as the 1992 Gallup poll, contain valuable data from which future surveys could profit. The conclusion outlines the need for a new multi-national survey of Population/Environment Knowledge, Attitude, and Practice (PEKAP).

Parks, resettlement, and population: A case study in the Dominican republic

A survey of 139 men and 123 women in four communities bordering Los Haitises National Park in the Dominican Republic was undertaken in late 1992. The survey followed a presidential decree ordering the army to clear the forest of people and cattle, and to resettle a number of villages. Some of the findings were as follows. Use of the forest for firewood and cash crop cultivation was admitted by most of the population, but there was also an awareness of the need to conserve the forest and an expressed willingness to compromise on its use. However, awareness of park boundaries and an appreciation of the concept of a national park were less evident. Villagers welcome rapid population growth and women favor (and have) large families despite high rates of sterilization. Nearly everyone is opposed to resettlement and favors community participation in programs to alleviate pressures on the park. In addition to providing housing and services, a resettlement program will have to find adequate substitutes for curren...

Opposition to family planning in Latin America: conservative nationalism

While opposition to family planning in Latin America stems primarily from the Church Marxists and Nationalists this paper focuses on the published views of 3 outspoken Nationalists. Felix Cruzat Alegre a Lima lawyer states that Latin American poverty is caused by archaic socioeconomic structures rather than a lack of natural resources or land. The North Americans in his view wish to keep the underdeveloped nations weak and underdeveloped via lagging population growth and eventually export people to the less developed and less populous nations. Dr. Herman Vergara a psychiatrist and professor of psychology in Colombia fears that supporters of family planning within the nation are politically opportunistic economically opportunistic or anti-Catholic and that the basic motivation and strategy for the movement is alien. Napoleon Viera Altamirano the El Salvadoran journalist considered by the articles writer to be Latin Americas most articulate pro-natalist charges family planners with attempts at racial genocide. The author concludes that North Americans should listen carefully to the arguments since beneath what appear to be illogical arguments and irrational fears lie the deeper perhaps more justified sentiments of national pride and resentment over a sad history of relations with powerful nations.

The timing of Spanish marriages a socio-statistical study

Abstract A sample survey of 2,012 married and single women aged 18-59 in Madrid was in part focused on causes of late marriage, which has for a long time been characteristic of Spain. It was found that age at marriage was not related to a variety of socio-economic measures, to parental restrictions on courtship, nor to birth order or number of siblings. Direct economic motivations appear to have affected length of courtship but scarcely age at marriage. Ages at marriage differ in different areas of Madrid, even when key demographic and social variables are controlled; and evidence from a sub-sample of interviews suggests that it may be a characteristic of different families. Along with clear evidence of normative patterns supporting long courtships and late marriages, such data point to the potential importance of sociological variables, and to the need for similar research on determinants of mens ages at marriage.Abstract A sample survey of 2,012 married and single women aged 18–59 in Madrid was in part focused on causes of late marriage, which has for a long time been characteristic of Spain. It was found that age at marriage was not related to a variety of socio-economic measures, to parental restrictions on courtship, nor to birth order or number of siblings. Direct economic motivations appear to have affected length of courtship but scarcely age at marriage. Ages at marriage differ in different areas of Madrid, even when key demographic and social variables are controlled; and evidence from a sub-sample of interviews suggests that it may be a characteristic of different families. Along with clear evidence of normative patterns supporting long courtships and late marriages, such data point to the potential importance of sociological variables, and to the need for similar research on determinants of mens ages at marriage.

Does demographic knowledge matter? Results of a poll in the New York City watershed.

A 1993 telephone survey of 1,150 households in 15 upstate towns in the New York City watershed asked a number of knowledge and attitude questions related to perceptions of national, local, and world population size. Considerable public ignorance of population size was revealed, with gender differences the most critical explanatory variable. Males were much more likely to respond to knowledge questions on population size, and to respond more accurately, even after several other characteristics were held constant. However, knowledge is at best unrelated to measures of concern about population, and even shows a slight tendency to be associated with lower concern.

Population Knowledge and Attitudes of Latin American Adolescents: Impact of Gender, Schooling, and Culture

Several thousand students in each of three Latin American secondary schools completed questionnaires dealing with birth control and population. Sex, grade level, and country were among the more important characteristics affecting knowledge and attitude. However, desired family size was unaffected by years of schooling and is set at between two and three children by Grade 7. The impact of schooling was only partially accounted for by associated social and economic controls.

The philosophy of demographic policy in Latin America

Until recent years Latin Americas were convinced that their countries were underpopulated. They saw vast expanses of land that were not being used; they felt that more dense settlement was necessary before communications could be build economically and internal markets developed; they observed that in the four hundred years since the Spanish conquest the rate of population growth had been rather slow - much slower for instance than that experienced by the United States. Furthermore in some countries the leaders felt that the backwardness of the Indian populations reflected biological inferiority and thus that progress could only be achieved through major infusions of European blood. Therefore in the nineteenth and early part of the twentieth centuries it was common for governments (and occasionally private groups) to promote immigration from Europe. In Brazil and Argentina immigration was in fact massive; in the other countries it represented only a trickle. (excerpt)